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The University of Cincinnati (UC) has announced the inauguration of the John M. Tew, Jr., MD, Chair in Neurosurgical Oncology, a $2 million endowment at the UC College of Medicine. UC also announced the chair's first holder: Ronald Warnick, MD, Medical Director of the UC Brain Tumor Center at the UC Neuroscience Institute.

The Tew Chair, which was funded by donations from throughout the community, will help support research in brain cancer and brain metastasis for generations to come.

Tew, professor of neurosurgery, radiology and surgery at UC, a Mayfield Clinic neurosurgeon, and clinical director of the UC Neuroscience Institute, served as chairman of UC's Department of Neurosurgery for 20 years before co-founding and taking the helm of the institute in 1998. Tew has been a neurosurgical pioneer in the areas of microsurgery, lasers, image-guided surgery and trigeminal neuralgia.

The announcements were made by Mario Zuccarello, MD, professor and chairman of UC's Department of Neurosurgery and the Frank H. Mayfield Chair for Neurological Surgery.

Warnick is a professor of neurosurgery and radiation oncology and a Mayfield Clinic neurosurgeon. He specializes in the treatment of primary malignant brain tumors (brain cancer) and brain metastasis.

“To be named the Tew Chair is the greatest honor of my career,” Warnick said. “Thousands of individuals have been touched by the care John Tew has provided and the neurosurgical advances he has led. From Dr. Tew, my most valued mentor, I have learned to relentlessly pursue the right course, no matter how improbable it may seem at the start. I have also learned that the most important job of a brain tumor physician is to provide hope.”

Tew graduated from Wake Forest University in 1957 and the Wake Forest School of Medicine in 1961. He performed his neurosurgical residency at the Harvard University-affiliated Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital. In 1969, as the recipient of the prestigious Van Wagenen Fellowship, he trained under Gazi Yasargil, MD, the founder of micro-neurosurgery, at the University of Zurich.

Tew is co-chairman of the Acoustic Neuroma Association’s Medical Advisory Board, a member of the Hemifacial Spasm Association’s Medical Advisory Board, and a member of the UC Brain Tumor Center’s community advisory council.

Warnick came to Cincinnati as director of the division of surgical neuro-oncology in 1991, following a neuro-oncology fellowship at the University of California, San Francisco. In the mid-1990s, under his direction, UC became one of the first four centers in the country to use gene therapy for the treatment of recurrent brain tumors. Warnick was later honored for that pioneering work with the Mahaley Clinical Research Award and the National Brain Tumor Foundation Award for Excellence in Clinical Research. Warnick has continued to oversee research in the areas of radiation seeds and chemotherapy wafers, frameless radiosurgery and radiotherapy, multimodal brain imaging and tumor biomarkers.

In addition to serving as vice chairman of the Department of Neurosurgery and chairman of Mayfield’s Board of Directors from 2004 to 2012, Warnick served as chairman of the American Association of Neurological Surgeons/Congress of Neurological Surgeons Section on Tumors from 2005 to 2007.